Niall Cartwright looked wistfully at the sky. He was about sixteen and his fur was grey as a wolf's should be, although there were patches of orange upon him here and there, traces of the fox side of his family.
He had seen hangings before, of monsters, murderers, petty thieves and heretics. Not that enjoyed watching them, but the attendance of executions was mandatory by Church law. Each time, Niall had closed his eyes at the moment of death although the Church had denounced this as a mortal sin.
He hadn't slept much in the night, but that was not unusual these days and it was part of the reason why it was now his turn upon the scaffold, hands bound behind his back, awaiting death with an air of quiet resignation.
They put the noose over his head, the headwings making this slightly awkward, and then drew it tight around his neck. "I haven't done anything!" he insisted once more, but it hadn't helped him so far. They prodded him over the trapdoor and read the charge to him. His crime was simple - he had grown a pair of wings on his head, and that meant he was an incubus. He had to die in case he began to feast upon his fellow townsmen.
At least my parents didn't live to see this, he thought. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a guard climb up the steps and stand behind the hangman. Finally, Father Mandamus ascended the steps as well and came to stand beside him.
"Be not afraid, my son," he began. "Accept the death which we now offer you, for it is a holy death - the death of the Saviour visited upon you. For just as His hanging brought us salvation, so too will your death purify your soul and allow you swift passage to heaven.
"If you continued to live, the demon side of you would grow and grow until you became one with the spawn of the pit. Death then would mean damnation for you. Trust me, this way is better."
"Bullshit," spat the wolf, his impending death finally giving him the courage to speak out against the town's high priest and leader.
Hands bound, he gestured with his head at the jeering crowd.. men, women and children impatient to watch as his young life was snuffed out. The execution of a demon was a grand event and pedlars were hawking mementos, small wooden sets of gallows with a winged wolf figure on a string.
"Look at them," he said. "This is nothing more than a lynch mob. Can you, Father, as a man of God, look me in the eye and tell me that these bloodthirsty sadists care one jot for my soul? I think not. It's just a lie you've made up to justify killing me when I haven't done anything wrong!"
The Father turned away. "We are too late! You have already made a pact with the forces of the Evil One. If only you could have seen the Lord has he appeared before me, then you too could appreciate the sanctity of what we are about to do. But alas, it is too late for you.
That blasphemy shall be taken as your final words," he said and then raised his voice so the crowd could hear.
"Go now sinner, to meet your dark Master!" he shouted, the crowd giving a cheer that quickly fell into the hushed silence of anticipation. The young wolf closed his eyes as the hangman reached to pull the lever. Death came suddenly.
There was a scream of terror from the crowd along with a horrible wet sound on the scaffold. Hardly daring to believe that he was still alive, Niall gingerly opened one eye. The executioner's heart had been pierced by the wing-tentacles of a very angry canine incubus, standing where the guard had been just a second before and wearing a look of savage delight upon his face.
The prospect of death had emboldened the young wolf, but the realisation that he risked his very soul being devoured suddenly made the gallows seem like a really, really good idea.
"No.. no.." he whimpered as the 'cubi turned to face him, almost lazily knocking the furious Holy Father off the scaffold and into the crowd below.
Frantically, Niall jumped up and down on the trapdoor in a vain attempt to kill himself before the incubus could destroy him. A sharpened tentacle promptly sliced over his head - the noose falling limply around his neck and blocking that means of escape.
Niall's eyes were wide with terror, forgetting for a moment that he was a 'cubi too now. When he remembered it didn't bring any consolation - this incubus was probably from a rival clan. He didn't know much about 'cubi but he did know that they had clans and that the clans had rivalries and feuds and wars.. and that they ate people's souls.
The young wolf curled into a foetal position, cowering and whimpering as the 'cubi's tall shadow fell over him... the brave face he had put on at the gallows had long since fled.
"Well, Niall," I said, "That was a close one! Let's go."
"No... please... not my soul... Let me stay here and die!" he sobbed.
"Your soul?" I asked, bewildered. "I came here to save your life, not eat it."
Niall began to giggle hysterically. "Save it for later consumption?"
"Don't be stupid," I growled. "I've just killed someone in order to rescue you, so you're coming with me, like it or not."
I pulled him up by the arm, and as the guards made their way up the steps, halberds at the ready, I proscribed a circle with one of my claws and we vanished in a flash of black light.
As we walked through the corridors of my palace, the lad finally found courage enough to ask me the questions I had been patiently waiting to hear.
"What do want from me? Did you save me because I'm a fellow 'cubi? Or a fellow wolf? Or what?" his voice was unnaturally shrill - he still seemed to believe that he was about to face execution after all, or quite possibly a fate far worse than mere death.
"Well, because you're a 'cubi, I suppose." I said. "Not just any 'cubi, though. I saved you because you personally are very important to me. It took me a while to track you down, though. And for that I apologise."
"But who are you?" Niall asked.
"Johan Cross," I replied. He whimpered again and made the sign of the Noose. "I'm your great-great-grandfather," I added.
Niall and I sat in an office which I used for important meetings with my staff.
The lighting was electric, which impressed Niall greatly, as did the air-conditioning system - crude by today's standards, but not bad as a first attempt.
Once he was convinced that he was going to live and had got over the initial shock of learning that his great-grandfather was the product of a one-night-stand between a vixen and a 400-year-old farmer who was now the region's most notorious crimelord, he began to settle down and asked various questions which were troubling him.
For instance, how it was that I was only his great-great-grandfather when nearly eight generations had passed since I had bedded Chelsea?
"I don't really know myself," I said, "but it turns out that your grandfather was actually a Were, which could account for his remarkable ability to sire your father at the grand old age of 85.
"Genetics and metabiology aren't my strong point I'll admit, but it seems likely that his counter-magical abilities may have somehow interfered with the 'cubi factor and left it dormant for a couple of generations."
"None of my ancestors were 'cubi, then?" he asked. "Apart from you, of course.."
"No, I've examined the birth records. No-one was born with wings until you. I had almost given up when one of my agents in Macura heard reports of a wolf becoming an incubus in some weird town nearby."
"The Church said it might happen," Niall admitted. "They must have kept watch upon me. I guess I always knew they would get me in the end, that's probably why I never paid much attention to their laws."
"Tell me about this Church." I said.
Niall's home was Mundathra, a small, impoverished town just on our side of the border between Ha'Khun territory and Macura province. Granted a certain amount of autonomy by Page many centuries ago and later forgotten, it had come under the control of a deeply religious group who called themselves the 'Church of Christ the Furry'.
I had never heard of them before, although the more Niall told me, the less I liked the sound of them.
I had been brought up under the wing of The Church of Christ the Human, who believed that God was human in form, and had sent his own human son to Furrae in order to help sort things out. Like most Christianic religions they had a curious belief that demons served Hell, that angels were servants of their God and that good people would turn into them when they died.
As a consequence of this it seemed that their religion was primarily aimed at Beings, and this was probably the reason I later became apostate, all things considered.
Overall, in spite of this weird hangup, they were an honest and charitable sort whose tithings were mostly used to aid the community at large and the poor in particular. Yet from my studies at SAIA, I knew that there were other, more sinister organisations that warped their religion to further their own ends and seemed to me that this 'Furry Church' was one of these.
They worshipped the Lupus Christi, sharing a not uncommon belief that the Son of God was a wolf (others believed Him to be a sheep or a lion).
But whereas most Christianic religions had a common theme of crucifixion, this group was unusual in that they believed their Lord had been hanged. Perhaps in days gone past their faith had been honest like mine was, but by now it had been twisted into some kind of death cult.
For they believed that death by hanging was somehow holy, and since they were in full control of Mundathra, public execution by the gallows was the death penalty proscribed for most crimes, many of which were considered trivial offences in other, more enlightened regions.
Attendance at the executions themselves was mandatory, and it was expected that everyone should watch the last moments of the condemned person's life, apparently part of some weird mass-prayer for their soul. Many of the crowd turned up willingly for the excitement - others, like Niall, came only reluctantly and turned away or closed their eyes when the unfortunate victim died. This was not something the Church could easily prevent, but many sermons were preached against it, threatening dire spiritual consequences for sinners who refused to give the spectacle their full attention.
Those who failed to attend without just cause would be cautioned by the Church. Too many absences, and they could well find themselves attending a hanging of their very own.
The Church's stance on magic was fairly predictable. Even in some of the more rustic areas magic was considered a special gift to be treasured. In nearly any other community Niall would have had his natural talents nurtured and encouraged. But in Mundathra it was forbidden as a tool of the Dark One, with - surprise surprise - a hanging in store for anyone found guilty of what they referred to as 'witchcraft'.
Ultimately it was most likely this very prohibition, combined with the massive and regular influxes of emotional energy from the executions which had allowed Niall's headwings to form at so young an age. Had he been a regular spellcaster, the magic level that caused them to appear would have been reached maybe ten years later.
"..and you let this band of fruitcakes run your town?" I said when he had finished.
"I don't know," he replied. "They've been in control since before I was born."
"Not for long," I said. "They may have been granted concessions when it comes to tax-gathering, but executing my citizens without authorisation, let alone in public, is not something that I will stand for. They are flouting the laws of my realm and I shall have to bring them to heel."
Niall looked at me. I could sense conflicting emotions in his unshielded mind, a faint tremor of fear as he remembered that he was talking to a powerful mountain lord, and a flickering thrill of horror and excitement that he was about to see Johan Cross at work.